Fixing the past
by Radiklement
Summary: Aizawa had always thought this part of his past well-buried, neatly stored among his good and bad memories as its own category of bittersweet times. He wasn't one to nurture false hopes and he doubted he ever had the capacity to be amazed by anything. His sunshine had been taken away long ago and there was no fixing a dark, cloudy sky. Until the dark clouds were given a name and a


This one-shot takes place in chapter 254 of Hero Academia. If you haven't read it, well, there are spoiler from the manga and also from Vigilante.

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Fixing the past

It had been worse than empty words echoing across an empty room.

Aizawa remembered the grave. The rain. The blood across the sheet spread on top of the form of his best friend.

His eyes burned so hard, he could have sworn they were bleeding with every blink.

He'd screamed, opening himself up despite hitting himself against a wall. Every word exchanged, every talk they shared. His mind had them crystallized in cherished memories until the very last. And spelling them out for someone that should have been an enemy and nothing more than a stranger.

Except it wasn't. Its frame. Its base. _**His.**_

_You're just trying to save one more person,_ he thought.

This time, it simply meant making himself this vulnerable, he felt bare. Yamada next to him was growing angrier with every passing minute. And his silence spoke volumes when the tears came. Aizawa wasn't sure what had started the gates. Not blinking for three minutes straight? Saying out loud the words that used to comfort him and were now the bittersweet memories his students would revive whenever they got psyched up about becoming heroes?

_It's for him._

Shirakumo had been used. Abused. Bio-engineered into something new. Deprived of his death. Maybe even deprived of the life he should have had? Had he still been alive under that piece of fabric? Would Aizawa have heard the beating of his heart if he had walked up to him and crouched down like every fiber of his being had begged him to?

_Maybe it's for yourself, Shota…_

He needed to blink so badly, the back of his eyes were itching. But if he did, wouldn't that allow all the quirks that weren't Shirakumo to permeate over what might be left of his personality? Wasn't he the only person suitable to suppress what had been added and modified…

If he was to blink, he'd imagine his friend going through whatever sick operations the scientists working for All-for-one had thought. Blinking meant erasing Shirakumo and letting in the new nightmares. His throat was raw with more words, pulled out from his insides.

His thoughts couldn't focus on a single thing, be it the memory of Shirakumo smiling, Shirakumo getting naked in the middle of the class, Shirakumo flying, how it felt to just float around on his cloud, the quiet trips they would take among the stars, hair wet from the sheer humidity, faces wet, and…

_Stop, stop, stop, not that open,_ he mentally refrained himself.

Wet lips. And their hands half in the clouds and half…

_Fuck, fuck, Shota, you're not supposed to…_

The whole face he yearned to remember, it was gone, replaced with a dark void. Like a fire of anti-matter. His glare tried to stay fixed on the yellow eyes. He used to feel alive under his gaze. Used to feel like he could reach for more.

"_We'll make our own agency…"_

"_You'd make a great teacher."_

"_We'll save people."_

_I couldn't save __**you**__._

His eyes closed, for a split second, but it was enough for the darkness to swallow him whole. Yamada was already tensed, but he sensed the shift and Aizawa fought against the mad pictures running through his head, against the urge to hide behind his long hair.

Did they desecrate a corpse? Did they resurrect him? Had he been alive for all this time and ripped of his individuality, patched together with other people until he went mad? He'd seen nomus. He'd seen them and was afraid Shirakumo's brain could be exposed beneath the darkness. His eyes empty, crossed, hidden by a wave of dark clouds.

_Fuck, these _could_ be clouds._

He erased the various quirks, wishing he could sense how many there were. Wishing he could sense the original quirk with just his eyes.

He'd thought the wound had been safely cauterized. He'd thought no more blood could be shed over this, except for the few twists of his heart when he'd lose focus and would start contemplating.

"_You think too much, Shota."_

He couldn't blink. Blinking meant seeing blue instead of black on that faceless head. And yet, he blinked again, the tears still coming down. He felt the sob at the back of his throat at some point and held his breath, briefly wondering if triggering Shirakumo's memories would be a real favour to him.

Yamada clapped a hand on his shoulder, the blatant support between them finally getting a rise out of the villain going by the name of Kurogiri.

A flicker in the flame-clouds as the yellow eyes glittered. The brief flash left an after-image behind, almost instantly gone, but Shota knew that profile too well. He closed his eyes then, overwhelmed, overcome. Torino cleared his throat and it was over with the desperate attempt, the older pro hero suggesting they come back in a couple days to try again.

Aizawa didn't speak. He was still pissed, but his brain couldn't even muster words that would begin to cover the way his chest was tightening. He could still breathe, except for that sob stuck on the inside of his throat. Yamada was screaming enough for two. The ride back to the school was a drowning of Yamada commenting on a hundred things, taking his anger out on every flaw in the reasoning behind the idea of waking up Shirakumo. He never used his name. It felt like something had been grated. Broken up again. Aizawa started tuning him out after the first five minutes. He couldn't show care the same way as either Hizashi or Shirakumo. He couldn't just grab someone's arm and squeeze. His smiles looked all kinds of wrong. He had forgotten how to be anything but cynical.

He looked out the window, met by his reflection rushing by with the lights and shadow alternating. His face stretching, fading, coming back to stretch again across the glass.

Shirakumo's whisky hair was all he could think about. He tried to swallow it back down.

"You could head home instead of the dorms," Hizashi suggested.

"No."

His apartment was an empty tomb and he needed to quickly check if his students were all in their dorms. To remember why he'd pressed on. To remember why after shedding his defenses and speaking the words he would whisper in the back of his mind when he got too sad, why and how there was still a sense to any of it. At this point, Hizashi was filling the silent with noise. He gestured towards Aizawa, freezing as he saw him tensing, his eyes glinting red.

They finally arrived, stepping off, gloom and despair sticking to them like glue. Lifting each foot was incredibly heavy and Aizawa struggled to remember what was waiting for him at the dorm. He was so used to the paths around the school, he barely noticed parting ways with Yamada or reaching the floor where he stayed to look after Eri.

Eri. His try at picking up a stray. Him begrudgingly following in Shirakumo's footsteps, only much, much too late.

_Eri._

It was still early, the girl still up and rushing up to meet him like she'd do when he'd come back from school early. She was getting better. Her tiny smile faded at she spotted the redness surrounding his eyes and how bloodshot they were. He blinked, unable to erase the edge to his gestures. The urge of keeping his eyes open. The sob was back, larger, stronger, making it almost impossible to swallow.

_Hold it, just hold it._

"Aizawa-san," Eri greeted him, uncertainty written over her round face.

She had gained just a little weight and he'd been so glad for it, despite playing it off with just a smirk.

His mouth parted open, his mind closing up. Eri looked alarmed and cautious now and he didn't like that look on her face. That poor girl had suffered so much, and he couldn't erase any of…

She could fix him.

His eyes twitched.

_Oh no._

But she could. She was maybe the only person in this country with the power to actually fix his…

_No, no, not Eri. No one will be using her._

"What's wrong?" she managed to ask.

"It's complicated," he offered, taking a tentative step forward.

His legs were weak and he felt everything wavering as the thoughts collapsed on each other.

The dark clouds hiding a face that might not be a face, that might just be a brain on dark skin with crossed eyes that would be a mockery of the man he used to know.

"Can I help?"

The question was so innocent and yet so charged, Aizawa was tempted to run away and ask the director to take over for him. Except he wasn't going to let the director see him like that. Hell, he shouldn't even let Eri see him like that. He took the three more steps forward, kneeling, since opening himself was really all he was good for on this particular day. They would always hold hands and it felt natural, but hugging was still a work in process for the both of them.

"I'm making a very scary face, huh?"

Eri shook her head softly.

"A very sad face," she corrected him.

He felt an ironic smile pulling at the corners off his mouth and wondered just how awful it had to look.

Was that how he felt? Sad? Did it even cover every aspect of the hurt, anger and desperate longing toying with his nerves?

His throat was choked up and he coughed out the sob, feeling exhausted. Eri jumped forward at the sound, her tiny hands gripping onto his dark clothes, her arms trying to reach far enough to give him a hug. Aizawa held her back, shocked at the warmness spreading across his chest just from having her there.

Her horn poked into his chest, the pain dismissed, small and inconsequential compared to the knowledge someone this small depended on him.

_You didn't save her either._

Except he was working on it, one day at a time, like he did with his students, like he believed Shirakumo would have done.

He squeezed her tight, holding down the tiny sounds that threatened to undo him once and for all. Eri didn't talk. They were both better with silence, as if talking meant breaking something or taking the risk to get hurt. After a while of just hugging each other, she started humming a song.

_Maybe she can fix me until I can fix him?_

He brushed her hair, hating the selfishness of that thought. But if relying on her wasn't entirely wrong. If admitting that her tiny, shaky hugs made him feel better, if hugging her back…

It was okay, wasn't it? He was broken, but he was not breaking her.

_**You love her, Shota, and that's a good thing. I'm glad you took her in. Isn't she adorable?**_

Was that… Shirakumo's voice?

Like the voice he'd heard when he'd been taking on that power-absorbing villain? The voice everyone had said was in his head when he had been certain…

_I can't hear you now. If I'm mad, I'm no good to anyone._

No word followed him, and he was left to wonder if maybe the new mix of quirk making up what once was Shirakumo could allow his consciousness to hop around. Now that was a very sane, a very valid explanation to be hearing voices, wasn't it?

"I can't be that desperate…"

"Uh?"

"I'm sorry, Eri. I'm a bit of a mess."

Her tiny hands tugged on his hair, allowing for their eyes to meet, Aizawa wondering when she'd worked up the courage to even act this way.

"Deku says that… even when we're a mess, it gets better…" she whispered to him.

Her eyes were asking him if that was true and he could see tears forming. The smile he could give her was a fragile thing, almost more fragile than she was.

"It does."

_Sometimes_, he wanted to add, but he swallowed the word back down. Everything hurt, but what he'd learned today meant he could hurt again, in exchange for hope.

How he hated hope. But for her, getting better didn't have to be a lie. He would make sure she'd have peaceful years, and everything she needed to grow safe, to develop self-confidence and control. Most of all, he wanted to safeguard her smile. And he knew where that wish came from.

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After this last few chapters, I badly needed to write an Aizawa story that would have him and Eri hugging. It turned out extra drama and angsty, since it's me writing it. I hope you enjoyed.


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